50 THE AGRARIAN SYSTEM OF MOSLEM INDIA 
them with instructions to extend cultivation, and improve 
the standard of cropping. These aims are expressed in 
magniloquent language: “not a span of land was to be left 
untilled,” and “wheat was to replace barley, sugarcane to 
replace wheat, vines and dates to replace sugarcane”; but 
in essence the underlying idea was obviously sound, and, 
as so often in this reign, it was the execution which broke 
down. The officials, nearly 100 in number, who were chosen 
for the purpose, were an incompetent and esurient lot. 
They undertook to complete the task in three years, and 
started out with ample funds for the grant of advances; 
but much of the money was embezzled, much of the waste 
land proved to be unfit for cultivation, of 70 odd lakhs 
issued by the treasury in the course of two years, ‘not one- 
hundredth or one-thousandth part” produced any effect, 
and the officials were—naturally—in fear of drastic punish- 
ment. Before, however, the fiasco became manifest, the 
King was called away to the Deccan, whither he went in 
the year 1345. The chronicler opined that, if he had re- 
turned to Delhi, not a single one of these officials would have 
escaped with his life; but he was not destined to return, 
and, under his mild successor, the advances were written 
offt as irrecoverable. 
The story speaks for itself, and only two points in it 
require notice. In the first place, the desolation of this 
tract has sometimes been attributed solely to a long series 
of bad seasons, but the summary I have given shows that 
it was essentially administrative in its origin. There was 
undoubtedly severe famine in parts of India at this period, 
and the first attempt at restoration was defeated by a 
failure of the rains; but the second met with no such obstacle, 
and in view of the later failure it is not easy to suppose 
that the earlier attempt would in any case have been suc- 
cessful. It will be recalled that in this chronicler’s language, 
the word “famine” usually refers primarily to the popula- 
tion of the city. There was clearly famine in Delhi when 
L Afif, 93-4. This chronicler puts the total of advances at 2 krors. 
Barni's figure of 70 odd lakhs is apparently for the first two years only, and 
the balance may have been issued later; but it is perhaps more probable 
that the sum had been exaggerated by tradition in the half century which 
intervened before Afif wrote.